SPOTLIGHT

Post-9/11, assassination has become a new norm in the asymmetrical conflict between states and terror groups. While the appropriateness, if not justness, of targeting terror leaders is still a matter for debate, the killing of Soleimani is an escalation of the use of assassination.

To imply, in an absolutist fashion, that we can think or act our way out of suffering presents a bootstraps mentality to mental health. It’s a Kanye West-esque view on suffering that, like Paltrow’s products, is both useless and dangerous. And when this view is widely propagated by those of profound privilege—the view that suffering is a choice—it reveals the narrowness of its applicability.

From our lockdowns we glimpse once more, at least on a biological level, the chaotic ‘state of nature’ laid out by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan; a life underscored by the continual ‘fear and danger of a violent death’, in which ‘every man is an enemy to every man’.

PRACTICE

I favor the pro-life position on the abortion issue, all the while realizing that many good and decent people disagree with me. Why do they disagree? It seems they are influenced by popular claims and arguments favoring the pro-choice view. I intend no disrespect to anyone in saying this, but I think that many popular claims and arguments favoring the choice for abortion consist of knots of illogic that should be untangled.

The first part of this article asserted that, contrary to the prevailing mythology on both sides of the Cold War, socialist revolutions never succeeded in creating genuine democratic socialism. Then, several insufficient explanations for why socialist revolutions failed to produce socialism were critiqued.

ARTS & LETTERS

When you have a master or a leader, there’s always another master somewhere fighting them off or trying to contest them. The masters of other people can look pretty annoying to you, if not contemptible, irrelevant, reprehensible. I think about Beatlemania, where people were just horrified — What the hell is going on? These four guys with weird floppy haircuts. Or with Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, or any of the other rock stars. The disgust and terror that people have that others are caught up.

When you have a master or a leader, there’s always another master somewhere fighting them off or trying to contest them. The masters of other people can look pretty annoying to you, if not contemptible, irrelevant, reprehensible. I think about Beatlemania, where people were just horrified — What the hell is going on? These four guys with weird floppy haircuts. Or with Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, or any of the other rock stars. The disgust and terror that people have that others are caught up.

Pinker points to both the origin and function of a code of conduct that became the Western view of masculinity. ... the biological realities of the male species could be best and most productively served through the attainment and development of specific virtues.